Magnets
by Hearts.Pocky
Summary: In the time before keyblades and heartless and rafts, Kairi begins to suspect that there's something off about Riku. Implied Sora/Kairi, Riku/Kairi if you squint.


Note: Wow, it's been two years since I've last uploaded anything. That's not cool. This little piece came about because I spend too much time on TV Tropes... I've always been really interested in that single line spoken by Kairi in the first Kingdom Hearts game—"Riku's changed"—and then her suggestion to take the raft and just go with Sora. Someone suggested that that exchange took place because Kairi could somehow tell that Riku was going to accept the darkness because of her exceptionally pure heart. I love that idea, it gives her some depth and quite a bit more credit than the thought of her just randomly being like "let's ditch our friend, tee hee!" So yeah. Odd writing style for me, and I'm not exactly going to stick with it or anything, but it was fun. Enjoy.

Magnets

When summer spread across the islands like the break of dawn after a long night, relationships were tested and love gained and lost. They were kids. Sometimes, that's the hardest part to remember. They were all kids, not quite old enough to understand their feelings but young enough to want and want and want.

It was around that time in which Kairi realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with Riku.

She thinks it must have started just before the onset of developing adulthood, just before she started looking at Sora in ways she couldn't quite understand. That was when Riku first started talking about devising a plan to leave the Islands. When he started getting serious.

Initially, she hadn't minded the talk. Enjoyed it, even. That was when they were children, naïve enough to believe in princesses and dragons and magic, and the three of them dreamt up images of faraway lands so beautiful and so terrifying they could have come out of a storybook. It was a game and they were young.

But then Kairi and Sora turned thirteen and Riku was fourteen and much too old for his age. He had always been the smart one of the group. Most of the kids on the island found that they could rarely ever understand him, with his big words and bigger ideas. He started bringing up ideas of fate and destiny, of greater things and outer worlds. Kairi was happy at the Islands—always had been—but Riku's talk got Sora excited, and she didn't want to ruin the fun. Boys and their silly adventure stories.

Besides, it was becoming hard to convey just why the thought of leaving left her feeling so uncomfortable. Once before set plans and gathering supplies and the anxiety of _we're leaving in two weeks, a week, one more day_, Kairi made the mistake of asking Selphie if she thought Riku was changing. Her friend simply gave her a mischievous smile and a playful wink, and Kairi found herself having to rapidly backtrack, making indignant cries of _that's not what I mean_, as Selphie went on to tell her that everyone thought that she'd end up with Sora but hey, if that's what she really likes, no one would blame her-after all, hadn't he gotten so tall, so strong, so handsome? The blush didn't leave Kairi's face until she reached her house and collapsed on her own bed, eyes blurred with tears of mingled frustration and embarrassment.

Then, the week of his fifteenth birthday, Riku vanished. Kairi would go to the play island to find Sora, who was disappointed that he had no one to spar with; Selphie just wasn't the same and he was starting to get the feeling that Tidus was cheating somehow, he'd never won so many times in a row before—and when her nerves finally got the best of her, the sinking feeling in her stomach became too strong to ignore, she finally deciding to bring the subject up, as casually as possible, to Sora.

_Don't you think it's strange that we haven't seen Riku in a while?_

Sora looked at her, grinning as always. _Not really. Why?_

Losing her drive to tell Sora what she thought, she simply smiled and giggled and folded her hands behind her back. _No reason. He must be up to something._ Hoping in vain that he would read the subtext in her words.

He didn't understand. Still smiling, he awkwardly reached out, trying to get close to hold her hand while it was still just the two of them. _Probably._ Looking at her and reading the worry etched on her face, he backed off. _He's fine, Kairi! I talked to him last night. He's been doing homework or something... You know what his parents are like. Relax._

But she couldn't.

On an unusually gray morning about a work week after her failed talk with Sora, she went to visit him. She didn't think about it—couldn't, or she'd find reasons not to go—but she knew that her little irrational fear would go away if she would just muster up the courage to talk to him for once in her short life. She climbed into his window to find him writing something down, frantic, trance-like, sheets and sheets of paper at his side. He looked up only after hearing her bright _Hi._ She was relieved to see him smiling and willing to let her talk. She didn't bring up her troubles; just being in the room with him, happy and normal, calmed her. She asked what he was doing and, with an eagerness that seemed to spill from his entire being, told her his idea about a raft and sailing as far as they could go. He said the idea just came to him.

Finally inching toward contentment, Kairi began to rationalize. She figured she must have been exaggerating her fears in his absence. And while she still wasn't comfortable with the idea of leaving—the idea of being stranded in the ocean with him made her a little queasy-she'd rather be there than not. After all, better to have someone else to be with Sora just in case—and then, just as she began kicking herself for even thinking such a horrible thing, he looked at her and she swore, _swore_ that just for a moment his eyes turned an eerie, unnatural gold, so unlike their usual green. Something inside her seemed to want to push him away. She shook her head to rid the vision from her mind and politely declined when Riku asked if she'd like to stay for dinner.

As the year progressed and all she could do was hope that whatever was wrong with her would go away, she found that the boys were becoming more obsessed with leaving than ever. And she knew that once they made up their minds, there was no going back. So she simply sat back and let them—well, Riku—take most of the work in the actual construction of the raft, couldn't believe they were actually doing this, as she sat making good luck charms from seashells and praying that things could just please, please, please end up okay.

One evening before they were set to leave, she finally found herself with the opportune chance to speak with Sora. Afraid he would shrug off her greater insecurities, tell her she was just nervous about leaving, that she was imagining things, that he would protect her (oh, the guilt and feeling of helplessness that would cause her), she uttered a thought that had been on her mind for much too long.

_Riku's changed… we should go, just the two of us._ And when Sora insisted she was the one who had changed, she was inclined to agree. She had no reason to think that Riku was any different than before, really, no reason at all. All she knew was being near him was like trying to connect two magnets, desperate to retract, impossible to connect when lined up just so very _wrong_. Vaguely Kairi remembered learning about the phenomenon in school, but she doubted that was the answer she was looking for. All she could do was know what her heart was telling her, and she hated it; she didn't want to hate him or fear him or resent him. She wanted her friend back.

She wanted herself back.

The hours passed by, and soon it was the night before the departure. Never before had so many feelings warred inside of her small body, her strong heart, her tired mind. She was excited to go, she really, truly was; she loved her boys and would travel to the end of the world for them, and she had always been willing to agree with Riku that life on the island _was_ a little too boring to be healthy. She knew others had gotten out—Riku had told her about it time and time again. But she couldn't ignore the real issue anymore.

There was… a darkness inside of him. She rowed her way out to the play islands, sick of being locked up in her room, too restless to sit and do nothing, and the word came to her. That was it: darkness. That was the only thing she could think of, and suddenly her reluctance was beginning to make sense to her. There was something not-so-good deep inside of him, and it was slowly making its way to the surface.

Darkness. Yes, that was exactly it.

Maybe Sora couldn't feel it but she could, and she wished she knew why she was the only one who saw it. She knew, even as dark clouds shielded the light from the moon and fat, cold raindrops began to slap against her flesh, that she would have to be unyielding. Maybe, maybe if there was a darkness in him there was a light in her and she could guide him—had to guide him—to safety. She knew that the journey ahead would be long and brutal, but she could not give in. She knew _Riku_, and she knew he would not succumb, that Sora would not let him.

And she knew that, no matter what, as long as they were together they would find their way home.

Yet another summer drew to a close, and the islands were gone. Three had been lucky enough to escape. They were kids—too old for fairy tales and playing games, too young to be thrust into a life of chaos and fighting and loving and hurting, yet there they were.

And in many ways, she had been right about all those little things she couldn't dare to say. There had been a darkness, there had been a fight, and, in the end, there had been regret and light and conquest.

And in the end, they would find their way.


End file.
